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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27666752">rosier</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/justajoke99/pseuds/justajoke99'>justajoke99</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Tiny Meat Gang (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Drinking, M/M, Mentions of Therapy, Purposeful lowercase, Song Lyrics, Songfic, Swearing, Voicemails, rosier by brakence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:55:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,915</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27666752</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/justajoke99/pseuds/justajoke99</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>cody leaves noel voicemails. noel doesn't answer. </p><p>(based on the song rosier by brakence)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cody Ko/Noel Miller</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>rosier</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hi everyone! i've been listening to a lot of brakence, especially his song rosier and the lyrics really inspired me to write an angst based fic. i recommend listening to the song before reading, and maybe even during reading it. please let me know what you think! as always, please please do not send this to the boys or anyone affiliated with them, this is purely me doing some creative writing. much love to u all &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>cody’s drunk. noel can tell from the slur in his words in his voicemail. he can hear the party in the background. there’s shitty club music bumping.</p><p>“heyyyyyyyyyy noelllllllllllllllllllll, just wanna let you know that i misssssssssss youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu”</p><p>there’s an ache in noel’s chest. he doesn’t even know why he bothers to listen at this point. maybe it’s some fucked up form of self-destruction. letting himself fall in love with a man who he knows will never love him back. he presses replay on the voicemail, letting the tears fall down his cheeks. goddamnit cody. he hits replay again and again, listening to cody slur out the syllables in his name and it makes him think of all the times they spent together. he furthers his pity party by pulling out the scrap of paper he kept in his bedside drawer. a note cody had given him on tour. it had “i love you” in his signature scrawl. noel remembers sneaking kisses during tour, pushing each other up against the wall of the bathroom in the shitty tour bus while everyone else went out to eat. noel also remembers cody pretending like they never happened. pushing away noel when he leaned in for a kiss that one night after their toronto show.</p><p>...</p><p>“this never happened. we never happened, ok?” cody whispers to him, searching for acceptance in noel’s face. all he finds is tears.</p><p>“but i love you.” noel pleads quietly, trying to choke back the sobs that were building in his throat. </p><p>“no you don’t, you can’t. i’m not gay.” cody finalizes, turning around to get in his bunk.</p><p>noel grabs his wallet, keys and phone and gets off the tour bus. he walks around downtown toronto, freezing his ass off, and checking into the first hotel he can find. he lays in the shitty springform bed and stares at the ceiling. his phone is blowing up with messages from everyone on tour except for the one person he wanted to hear from.</p><p>noel goes back the next day. that’s the issue. he’ll always go back. they finish out the tour unceremoniously and noel takes the first flight back to LAX.</p><p>...</p><p>noel sobs a bit at the memory, and the voicemail that cody left. it had been a month and it still hurt. they’d stopped the podcast for a bit, citing scheduling differences, but promising that they’d be back soon. noel ignored the texts from his managers. he’d have to answer them at some point, just not now. not while sobbing at the memory of his short lived love with his best friend who’s pretending that they never happened. except for this goddamned voicemail. which noel knows he’ll hold onto for forever. the pain is too much, noel picks up his phone and opens his messaging app.</p><p>
  <b>cody</b>
</p><p>i need time away.</p><p> like a lot of time. please don’t contact me. </p><p>i can’t hear your voice right now.</p><p>noel turns off his phone and lays his head down on his pillow. there was some sort of peace in knowing that he had some semblance of control over the situation. hopefully cody actually followed his words and didn’t try to contact him. noel shuts his eyes and falls into a dreamless sleep, finally unplagued by the visions of cody.</p><p>cody’s head hurts in the morning, the weight of all the liquor he drank finally hitting him. he wobbles to his bathroom before hurling all of his stomach contents into the toilet. the only thing he remembers is the insane amount of shots he took with sam and devon. oh and he faintly remembers calling noel. why did he do that? cody pulls out his phone to see when he called noel when message notifications pop up on his screen.</p><p>
  <b>noel</b>
</p><p>i need time away.</p><p> like a lot of time. please don’t contact me. </p><p>i can’t hear your voice right now.</p><p>cody’s heart is beating out of his chest. what the fuck did he say to noel last night? he can feel more vomit rising up his throat but he doesn't think it’s from the alcohol. a wave of guilt is beginning to hit him, and he’s remembering things he elected to forget. cody begins typing, but he can almost hear noel’s voice in his head pleading him to not contact him. cody puts his phone down, and vomits once again, thinking about noel crying.</p><p>it’s been a month since noel sent those messages. he’s started streaming again, and he just dodges all the questions about cody. he knows cody watches his streams. he’s caught him lurking before. he says nothing. chooses to forget. </p><p>cody’s drunk again. watching noel’s stream. he watches as noel laughs and something hurts in cody’s chest. it’s the wave of guilt coming back again. tears fall out of his eyes as he picks up his phone. he forgets what noel says and dials his number. he watches noel look at his ringing phone on stream and decline the call. </p><p>
  <em> now there’s too many people that i have done wrong </em>
</p><p>
  <em> and that i owe my thanks to for sticking along with me  </em>
</p><p>“noel, hey man, i’m watching your stream. i wanted to say thank you for sticking along with me for a bit this summer and finishing out the tour. i know i fucked up, i’m sorry. please call me back” cody finishes out, hanging up, and watches as noel’s eyebrows go up at the voicemail notification on his phone. he ignores it again.</p><p>noel tries to put of his mind the fact that there’s a voicemail from cody on his phone while he continues streaming. no. he will not let him continue to ruin his life. noel finishes his stream and spends the rest of his night with his finger hovering over the voicemail notification, but never listening to it. he’d done too much work on himself to let it all go down the drain. </p><p>cody calls again. he’s persistent, almost angry, he wants to apologize so badly that he’s unrelenting. </p><p>
  <em> when you hold me  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> know you know me down to my core </em>
</p><p>“remember that night on tour? where we had just finished the show in nashville and i was so worried about fucking up a joke on stage that i started having a panic attack in the tour bus and you held me in between your arms and just whispered what you loved about me while i cried? i think about that night a lot. you knew just what to do to calm me down. no one’s ever known what to do. except for you. call me.”</p><p>noel sees the second voicemail notification and calls his therapist immediately. schedules an appointment and leaves the notification unopened. his therapist commends him. lets him know he did the smart thing, by not being self-destructive. noel smiles and nods and pretends he believes all the bullshit that he’s listening to. he doesn’t tell her about the scrap of paper he still reads sometimes, nor does he mention that he refuses to delete the voicemail. one day, he tells himself. it staves the hunger, the need, the pain for a bit. he knows he’ll crack one day. but not today.</p><p>he goes home from therapy and pours himself a whiskey. swishes the glass more than he actually drinks it. he stares at his TV, letting the LED colors of cody’s latest video burn into his eyes just like the whiskey burns the back of his throat. his phone rings and he’s not surprised when he sees the caller ID. he lets it ring, and ring, just as he lets the ice in his whiskey melt and melt. one day. </p><p>
  <em> and i fell apart in that bed </em>
</p><p>
  <em> what we built isn’t me  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> won’t put it back together again </em>
</p><p>“it’s me, but you know that. i’ve cried every night for a while now. i lay in my bed and let the tears wash over me. i think about what i said to you, every night. that’s not who i am, i hope you know that. if you gave me a second chance i would be different. wouldn’t be the same, that’s not me. i don’t know what happened. i’m sorry. call me.”</p><p>cody uploads videos. calls noel a lot. leaves a lot of voicemails. gets no reply. it’s expected, but he still grabs his phone with every notification. none of them were from who he wanted. he knows noel said not to contact him, but he couldn’t help it. he hopes noel listens. cody knows he at least thinks about it. he wants him to at least. he sees noel stream, listens to him laugh. god, that damn laugh. he remembers when he could make noel laugh like that. </p><p>
  <em> can’t take back what i said </em>
</p><p>
  <em> i just look through those messages </em>
</p><p>
  <em>  i left on read </em>
</p><p>“i know you’re getting these calls noel. i see it on your face on stream. i hope one of these days you’ll pick up, well not like on stream, fuck, i’m, you know what i mean. i just want you to know that i can never take back what i said. i know i hurt you a lot. i could feel it through those texts. i tried to listen. tried to not contact you. i left you on read but picked up the phone and called you. i just really want to talk to you. i can never take back what i said, but i promise that i can say so many better things to you, please, call me.”</p><p>noel doesn’t know how much more he can take. he’s let the messages build up on his phone for a while now. they sit, unanswered in his notification center. he hangs out with other friends, who seem to notice something’s up. he breaks one day.</p><p>“dude, what has been up lately? you’ve been super... evasive in telling us anything,” spock says, crunching a cheeto and gesturing to himself and cash. cash nodded in agreement. </p><p>“nothing’s been wrong, just been working too hard, you know how i am,” noel brushes it off, putting his cheeto back in the bag, his appetite was gone. a wave of sadness had hit him, everything he’d been ignoring had hit him smack in the face. </p><p>“dude you haven’t filmed the podcast in what? over a month or so? nothing new from the TMG twitter account after you announced your break. did something happen with cody?” cash replied.</p><p>“no, no nothing happened with cody. why would you think that? it was purely scheduling. between his new podcast, my music and all that, we had to step down a bit,” noel put up his hands defensively.</p><p>“even when you were filming and editing suki, streaming and working on music you still made the time for the podcast every week, this isn’t like you,” spock continues.</p><p>tears well in noel’s eyes. he reaches a hand up to scrub them away and spock and cash share a look. they never see noel cry. </p><p>“alright, fine, fine! if you wanna know so bad, i fell in love with cody over tour and i thought he liked me back, but then he told me that he wasn’t gay and so i couldn’t be in love with him, and that’s why we stopped filming the podcast, because i asked for time away, and now he fucking leaves me these voicemails and i haven’t listened to any of them. okay? is that what you wanted? are you fucking happy now?” noel sobs and stands up from the couch, hurrying quickly to his room and shutting the door. spock and cash look at each other with wide eyes. they’d just received more information about noel and cody then they ever had before.</p><p>“what? the fuck?” cash whispered, running both of his hands through his hair. spock sat with his hand over his mouth. they both stood up and walked to noel’s room, slowly opening his door, and they knew noel wanted them to be there because he left his door unlocked. he was sitting on his bed with his back to his door, head in his hands. </p><p>“hey man, we didn’t mean to like bring anything up, but, we’re here if you want to talk,”</p><p>“sorry, sorry it’s-there’s just been a lot going on and i’ve just been doing what my therapist says, and just scraping by, and i’ll tell you all more at some point, but i just, i can’t right now. one day,” </p><p>one day. he tells them, he tells himself. cash and spock leave, and after noel hears the door close, he brings his hands down from his eyes and looks at the scrap of paper sitting in his lap. he reads the three words again and again. he hears his phone ring. goddammit. </p><p>
  <em> oh, and i took you to rosier </em>
</p><p>
  <em> cause i thought we could cope </em>
</p><p>“i’m not even going to bother introducing myself. i’ve just been thinking. maybe a little bit of drinking too. i was thinking about after that tour stop in maine. i purposely shifted around the tour days so we could have an extra day in maine. i took us to cape rosier so we could relax and now that i think about it, i think that that was the moment i truly fell for you. i just wanted you to relax a bit because i know how damn hard you work, so i rented us that boat and we just took it out to sea. ”</p><p>
  <em> we got out on the ocean </em>
</p><p>
  <em> i fell out my boat </em>
</p><p>“-and we went out onto the ocean and i was too busy fucking around to notice how close i was to the edge? and i took one step back and fell completely out of the boat? i remember hearing you laugh. you laughed so deeply that it’s fucking ingrained in my head. and then you helped me out of the ocean and i was freaking out because i thought i saw a shark? and that only further spiraled into me freaking out about my life in general?”</p><p>
  <em> and you calmed me back down </em>
</p><p>
  <em> and you gave me some hope </em>
</p><p>“i was fucking rambling, i remember that. my hands were shaking, and suddenly, you held both of my hands in yours and then pressed your lips against mine. everything in the world went silent then. all the fucking buzzing in my head had stopped and i could only hear the crash of the waves and my own fucking heartbeat in my ears. you kept holding my hands in yours. you kept your lips against mine. you were the one to pull away and i remember taking my hands from yours and grabbing your face to bring it back so i could kiss it again. your breath was taken away and i remember just wanting to memorize the outline of your lips. we both looked at each other and smiled. it was absolute softest i’d seen you. i could see the rest the of my life flash by me as i ran my thumb against your bottom lip. you gave me hope. you showed me that my life didn’t have to be editing and filming and just go go go. that day at cape rosier showed me that life could slow down. but only with you. please call me, i don’t want to keep leaving these voicemails, they’re embarrassing to think about.” cody finishes his voicemail and takes another drink of his whiskey. the sip stings the back of his throat like the tears sting his eyes. he’s only halfway considering getting out of bed and driving to noel’s, forcing noel to talk to him, but if noel wasn’t picking up his voicemail, there’s no way he would react well to seeing cody’s face at his front door.</p><p>there’s a knock at noel’s door. he holds up a finger to his stream and takes off his headphones. he walks over to the door and his heart is pounding in his chest. he saw he’d missed a voicemail from cody about 25 minutes ago, and conveniently, that was the time it would’ve taken cody to drive to noel’s apartment. his hands are shaking. he looks through his peephole and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees long hair and glasses typing on a phone. </p><p>“goddamnit spock, i thought you were cody,” noel breathes out, holding a hand against his chest.</p><p>“nah dude, i thought i would pop into your stream and see what’s up,” spock says, dapping up noel. noel brings spock onto his stream and they laugh and laugh all night, noel trying to pretend like the panic still isn’t in his chest that cody could just show up at any moment. it wasn’t something he had thought could happen. what if cody did show up? what was noel supposed to do? cody was unrelenting on the phone calls, who knows if he would just show up. </p><p>it’s only been 2 hours when noel’s phone rings again.</p><p>
  <em> no commitments </em>
</p><p>“i know you probably don’t want to hear from me. you don’t want to make any commitments. not after i hurt you like i did. i don’t blame you-” tears well up deep in cody’s eyes.</p><p>
  <em> i’m going to hell, you’re going to heaven </em>
</p><p>“-you’re so much better than me. i don’t deserve anything after what i did to you. i hurt the person that i loved the most. i feel like that’s a cardinal sin, or something. i took what i treasured the most and... i feel like i broke it? like i know i didn’t break you or anything, but it feels like maybe since i lost you, i lost a part of myself? if that even makes any sense. i really don’t fucking deserve you. you loved me. i loved you, i still love you. i don’t even know why i told you that i wasn’t gay. i think i was repressing it? i was scared, maybe. of judgment, or of... of... i’m not really sure what i was scared of. i want you to know that i wasn’t scared of being with you. it was more that i couldn’t... agh, i know i’m not saying anything right. i just want you to know, this is all my fault. i love you and i can’t get that fucking image of you crying out of my head. i’ve fucked everything up, i’m so fucking sorry. call me, please.” cody finishes, with a choke, and as he hangs up he lets his chest heave with sobs. he coughs and coughs, holding his hand against his chest, the other one scratching against his throat. </p><p>noel’s gotten better at ignoring the voicemails. he fills his head with song lyrics, beats, ideas for movies, and with other friends. he still can’t bear to bring himself back onto the market. it’s been two months. fans are getting antsy about the podcast and noel knows he needs to address it. that requires talking to cody, and managers and so much bullshit that noel doesn’t want to think about. his therapist tells him to leave the podcast, he needs to be happy, and the podcast and cody haven’t made him happy in a while but there’s still a small part of his heart that refuses to let him cut ties. there’s still the voicemails. one day, he tells himself, leaving his therapist’s office, sitting in his car, head against the steering wheel. maybe it’ll be tonight.</p><p>he thinks it’s a sign from the universe when he hears his phone ring from its spot on the passenger seat.</p><p>
  <em> i left home now i’m fucked up </em>
</p><p>“i feel like i fucked everything up when i left calgary. like in some roundabout way, because when i left i met you, and like it was going all so well for me, we were going so well, and then i just ruined it when i said what i said to you. i left you and now i’m all fucked up. maybe i shouldn’t have let you go so easy. i should’ve responded to your texts, should’ve, hell, even shown up to your house and just demanded we talk. i fucking let you slip out of my hands, i just let it go. i can’t believe it. how could i lose the most important person in my life?”</p><p>
  <em> realized how much i loved you </em>
</p><p>“did i ever tell you? it was the...the week after we stopped the podcast when something bubbled in my chest. like genuine pain, i think, and love? and i knew then that i had fucked up. i didn’t accept it though, i just let it sit in the back of my mind. and it was seeing those fucking texts from you, and imagining you, fucking crying man, that had this wave of fucking guilt like in my chest. and that’s when i started calling you. man, if you listened to my first voicemail, and like this one, there’s a big difference,”</p><p>
  <em> all the pain went when you kissed me  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> we were ten toes up, now i’m six feet down </em>
</p><p>
  <em> moved on, you don’t need me now </em>
</p><p>“in the first one, i just want to talk but then in these last ones i just ramble. like even if we never speak again, these are just things i want you to know. like for example, i hope you know, that every time you kissed me, everything went away, like i said, the day at rosier, the buzzing in my brain finally fucking stopped. and every time after that. it was like there was fucking nothing else in the world except for you. we had something so good, and for such a short amount of time and i just let it fucking go. everything was good, and now i feel like i see the world in gray. i’m not dead, but it feels like it, you know? you seem so great, your streams are going great, and your fucking music man. you’ve extended far past tmg, and i hope you know how proud i am of you. i’m not even gonna tell you to call me. i know you probably won’t. i love you.”</p><p>noel sees the voicemail notification and something in him cracks. what the fuck had cody been saying to him for the past month? noel goes home, and lies on his bed, staring at his ceiling, and the glow in the dark stars he had put up there so long ago. it makes him think of that day in cape rosier in maine, where cody rented them that boat and he fell out and noel had to grab him, but how after that, after the sun had set, they had laid on the grass and watched the stars, and cody pointed out all the constellations he could remember, and there was something in his eyes, something that made noel fall for him even harder, the pure passion, the love. they had held hands and whispered into each others ears, watching the stars. noel tears up a bit at the memory. the stars on his ceiling would be just as good as the ones in maine if cody were here next to him. noel looks at the voicemail notifications still on his phone. the last one was the longest. the curiosity itched at noel’s finger tips.</p><p>and for the first time in months,</p><p>cody’s phone is the one that rings.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>first time i've ever written an ambiguous ending, and really first time i've done a songfic or written anything angsty without a happy ending. would you all want to see a second chapter that gives it a happier ending, or does the ambiguous ending work well enough? please let me know! i appreciate every hit, kudos and comment and again ily &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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